BEFORE 1895…..Wife beating was perfectly legal in London, England….the only restriction was timing…..when a bylaw made it illegal for a husband…..to hit his wife between 10pm and 7am…..it was because the noise was keeping the neighbors awake…..
AFTER HIS WIFE PASSED AWAY….An elderly man in the Philippines found himself alone, with his children living too far away….to help him daily…..and his neighbors decided the distance wasn’t acceptable….so dozens of them gathered, attached bamboo pole beneath his entire house…..and physically lifted it into their shoulders for two hours…..they carried it down the road, through the village….and all the way to where his children lived…..in the Philippines, this tradition is called “Bayanihan”…..and it is simply what neighbors do.
BEFORE 1950…..Switzerland took poor and orphaned children from their homes….and auctioned them to farmers as unpaid labor…..under the “Verdingkinder” system…..the country officially apologized in 2013….and granted symbolic compensation to 201 of the surviving victims.
A MASSIVE LEAK….Of 11.5 million documents from the law firm Mossack Fonseca….exposed how the world’s super-rich, including 12 national leaders hide their money in offshore tax havens…..it revealed a global system of corruption and money laundering…..the journalist who led the investigation in Malta…..Daphine Caruana Galizia was assassinated by a car bomb…..the rich continued to get richer…..the system stayed broken….and the whistleblower paid the price.
IN CHINA….Some parents attend dating markets without their adult children….they carry handwritten profiles listing age, height, salary, education and whether their son or daughter owns an apartment…..then they negotiate with other parents, exchanging phone numbers and arrange introductions….many young adults know nothing about the search….or actively oppose it….where marriage remains a family duty….mom and dad may begin choosing your spouse before you even meet.
ONLY THREE PEOPLE IN THE WORLD…..Can travel abroad without a passport….King Charles III, Japan’s Emperor Naruhito and Empress Masako…..British passports are issued in Charle’s name…..so the sovereign does not carry one himself…..Japan’s imperial couple travel under special diplomatic arrangements instead…..before every journey, their governments notify the destination and provide official documents confirming who’s arriving……every other royal, including Camilla….still need passports.
THE 1976 HORROR MOVIE…..The Omen is considered the most cursed production in history….the lead actor (Gregory Peck) and the writer took separate planes to the UK…..both planes were struck by lightning….the producer was almost struck by lightning in Rome, Italy…..a few weeks later, the special effects director got into a car crash….his assistant was sliced in half (exactly like a death scene in a movie)…..the curse got so bad that the director hired a priest to bless the set….the priest was hit by a car days later.
ON FEBRUARY 10th 2009……NASA realized a nightmare scenario…..a functioning US communications satellite (Iridium 35) and a defunct Russian military satellite (Kosmos 2251)….crossed paths over Siberia…..they were moving at 26,000 mile per hour…..they collided…..there was no sound….just a silent violent release of energy that shattered both satellites….into 2,000 pieces of shrapnel…..this debris field is still orbiting Earth today…..threatening the ISS and future space travel…..it was the first hypervelocity traffic accident in history. CHINA….Has nearly 30 million more men than women…..and in some regions unmarried men outnumber unmarried women two to one……marriage can require an apartment, a car and a payment to the bride’s family….one survey put the “bride price” at $19,000….six time the average male migrant worker’s annual savings…..as jobs and wages weaken, millions of men are finding the traditional route to marriage almost impossible…..which is helping fuel growing resentment towards women.